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All posts for the month June, 2017

We are here in beautiful and sunny Seattle. Locals have complained about an extremely long, dreary and wet winter and spring. It is goreous here this weekend, in fact, on Sunday morning at 8am, the sun was already out! We got very lucky wih the weather, as I had to buy a pair of Bermuda shorts yesterday, to wear today.

What is the most obvious thing about Seattle this weekend besides the sunny weather? It has turned blue, completely blue, and it is not even Seahawks season. The blue belongs to the Toronto Blue Jays MLB team, in town for a three games series with the hometown Mariners. Why so many Toronto fans?

Blue Jays fans outnumbered the Mariner fans last night by at east 2 to 1!!!! Why? It turns out most of these fans are from western Canada. It is a good 3,000 miles to Toronto, to support their only major league team, other than NHL hockey, which, BTW, has two teams from the US in the Stanley Cup finals. Talking to them, they all said it is cheaper, closer, and better to visit Seattle, than fly to Toronto.

I wondered why fans would fly all the way from Toronto for an away game here. Why not go to famous ballparks in bigger cities, like Fenway, Wrigley, and Yankee Stadium? Most Jays fans are from Vancouver, which now makes a lot of sense to me. Plus this must be a big pay day for Seattle merchants, hoteliers, and restaurateurs. Waves of Blue Jay blue have taken over the city!!!!

Moving on to bigger and better things, Seattle is having yet another building boom. It is not enough that Amazon has or will soon have, over a million square feet of office space in the fabulous downtown core. We killed some time yesterday at Macy’s, and found a huge transformation. They sold the top 4 floors (5, 6,,7,8) for office space earlier, and just recently sold two more floors! The Macy’s retail area will now be just 3 floors, a basement, and floors 1 and 2.

Another development is what the news calls “no frills rental units.” In a city with commonplace $2000 a month rents, with concierge services, high end appliances, and yoga rooms, this is a huge departure from the past. At least a thousand “workforce” apartments will be coming with affordable rents.

We see many of our old, and familiar buildings gone. We see streets and intersections torn up. We saw many sidewalks closed for either demolition or huge scale building projects. The skyline is changing rapidly. Even Frasier Crane would have a hard time affording his 5000 square feet city apartment. It is the “Amazon” effect, with another million square feet of office space, to join a recently completed million square feet on Sixth Avenue.

Many Seattle and Portland visitors are headed to Canada for asylum. Anywhere from 400 to 700 asylum seekers reach Canada each month. Most are foreigners, here legally or not, willing to take $300 taxi rides to Canada!!! The route goes something like this:

1. Leave Iraq for NYC.

2. Fly to Seattle.

3. Take taxi to Blaine, WA for $300.

4. Cross O Avenue a long, unfenced Canadian street along the border.

5. Vancouver has an $18 million Welcome Centre, subsidized by the government.

So, the question is, for Americans, could we, if we desired, do the same thing?

Seattle, and the entire state of Washington was deeply saddened by the death of local boy made good, Adam West, of nearby Walla Walla. His real name was William West Anderson. He graduated from Whitman College in Walla Walla, and spent two years in the Army. He changed his name to Adam West, went to Hollywood, and appeared in shows like Bonanza, Perry Mason, Bewitched, 77 Sunset Strip (I loved that show), Maverick, and Gunsmoke.

Curiously, an online search in the Sun Valley directory for Adam West results in a prompt to “See Wayne, Bruce” which results in “Please consult Crime Fighters” in the Yellow Pages, leading to “See Batman” leading back to Adam West. During his lifetime, he appeared on the cover of Life magazine, and later appeared on shows like Laverne and Shirley, and Fantasy Island. He will always be the real Batman to me.

Cannabis ads are rampant here in the newspaper. The one ad that I like is Uncle Ike’s. They sell a quarter ounce for $15. They have three locations, and FREE parking!

It never feels like a Sunday here in Seattle during a bright summer day. All the stores are open, people are out in gaggles, the mood is incredible, and we love it. We walked from downtown, out to Chinatown to our favorite mega grocery store, Japan style, Uwajimaya. We shopped, had a fabulous sushi lunch, and tried to find Sheri’s frozen durian. We found the fresh ones for $6 a pound, but $48 is too much to pay for the stinkiest fruit in the world.

We finally made it down to the flagship Nordstrom store downtown. Since I no longer work, I do not shop like I did before. But I like to look. Sheri, on the other hand, still shops like the retiree she has been for 17 years!!!! But I love this store, met some nice people there, who are still friends, even though she moved to NYC.

Today, June 11th, is our 22nd wedding anniversary. And how thankful I am that Sheri has put up with my antics over the years. She did such a wonderful job raising Sarah, when her own mother threw her out of the house. Sarah finally acknowledged what a great job Sheri did last Mother’s Day.

One thing for sure, we do not miss the frequency of sirens and alarms of city life. Downtown Seattle probably has more sirens per hour than NYC or Chicago. We are so thankful living in the quiet little bedroom community of Clovis. But, truth be known, I do miss some big city things, like the dining, shopping, professional sports, music, and dear friends. The homeless and pot smoking are everywhere in this city, taking away some of the charm that originally drew us here.

Well, it is almost nap time this afternoon. We have a big evening planned.

Dinner on Sunday at our favorite Seattle restaurant, Lola, then some music at Jazz Alley. Grammy nominee Jeffrey Osborne put on a great show, the last of his four concerts here. People were dancing and singing like a party was going on, and it was!

We had a tasty and tender octopus appetizer to start. We followed that with roast lamb, Greek spaghetti, and braised asparagus. We topped it off with Tom’s famous coconut cream pie! What a great anniversary dinner.

Monday had lots of options. After a huge breakfast at Lola, we decided to get some retail therapy in the downtown area. We bought these really strange objects made from paper. Some people call them books. I still love my travel guides in print, esp. When internet service is not available in 2nd world countries.

Sadly, our favorite car service owner and driver, Elias is out of town at a funeral. But for only a dollar each, we can ride the light rail from downtown to the airport in about 40 minutes.

We learned that some dear friends here were carjacked at gunpoint recently. They arrested the guy, who is now serving his sentence in jail. A druggie who steals cars or $$ for his habit. It turns out they need to steal a car every 5 days to maintain their habit. Speaking of, the stench or aroma of pot is everywhere here, all the time! You may remember our little Lexi swallowed a joint on the ground last month, and had to go to the pet ER!

Tonight (Monday), we are meeting an old friend for dinner, along with her son and her boyfriend, not sure which. Then, we have an early flight back home, to much warmer weather, I see. Our apartment here has worked out mostly for the good, with lots of space and a full kitchen. But in the heart of the tourist action, it is busy and noisy outside. But hotels have become so expensive, around $350 to $400 in the downtown areas.

But I can’t wait to get home and pick up Lexi from the pet resort. I had to show her photo to all of our friends here. Our hostess last night was also a Lexi. Onward and upward!

Though we have been to Seattle many times, actually over fifty, it remains one of our favorite cities in the entire world. We have been visiting this fine city since our honeymoon in 1995. We now visit just once a year, at our Anniversary, though for many years, we visited three times a year, adding our birthdays in October and February.

So, we are always on the search for places, events, people, and things to explore or visit. Most of the time, we find some a concert, museum exhibit, farm dinner, or party to attend. Other times, we get together with old friends or relatives for a meal or party. This time, we are going back to Jazz Alley for a concert by four time Grammy nominee, Jeffrey Osborne on Sunday eve. In the past, we have seen performers like Paul Simon, the Seattle Symphony, Chicago, Average White Band, Tower of Power, the Kingsmen (Louie, Louie), Janis Ian, Sting, Hall and Oats, Judy Collins, Motown (the musical), and several plays.

But during the day, what else could we do. For one, I may head out to see the Mariners at Safeco Field. They actually have a decent team this year! But the crazy Toronto Blue Jays fàhave taken over this city. I have been out there a few times, including the old Kingdome that was blown up a few years ago. Who knows, we may be back when our Fresno State Bulldogs play the U Dub Huskies this Fall.

And please do not mention the famous Gum Wall at Pike Market. Gross! They have actually cleaned it several times, and have now declared it a Superfund Site!!!

But burlesque is alive and well in this city. Many nice restaurants and bars have events suitable for both sexes! The Triple Door, where we often go for concerts, got its start as a vaudeville show, later a house of prostitution, then a parking lot, before returning to its musical roots.

We heard former POTUS Obama loved Fran’s Chocolates, especially the salted caramels. But a 20 piece box runs $28, a little pricey for retirees. You nostalgia fans might consider visiting the gravesites of two famous people, either Jimi Hendrix, a Seattle native at Greenwood Memorial Park in Renton, and Bruce Lee in Lakeview Cemetery.

Famous Dick’s Drive In is THE place for a burger in Seattle. Only $2 for a cheese filled, non-organic, gluten filled burger. If that doesn’t get your attention, maybe a SLUT will. When I say slut, we are actually referring to the South Lake Union Trolley, but it is a fun ride nonetheless.

Needless to say, we have lots of options, including shopping at some of our favorite venues, meals with friends, and walking the city. What a great place to spend our Anniversary!

This is a perfect discussion while we are in Seattle, the world’s most famous city for coffee drinkers. Seattle consumes more coffee than any other American city. There are 35 coffee shops (which is TEN times more than the U.S. overall) per 100,000 residents. The average person in Seattle spends $36 a month for coffee. Starbucks (currently 424 stores here) was founded here in 1971. In addition, there are 694 independent coffee places. If you have ever been to the famous Café’ Nervosa you will know what I am referring to.

How did the phrase, “cup of Joe” originate?

Was it a barista named Joe? Or Jose?

Was it named by coffee importers in Johannesburg, SA (often called Jo’burg by locals) when they specialized in Arabica beans?

Was it named after the witch hunt by Senator Joseph (don’t call me Joe) McCarthy?

Was it where have gone Mrs. Robinson, Joltin‘ Joe has gone away?

Was it named for the greatest QB ever, Joe Montana after he won his first Super Bowl?

No!!! The answer is below, though it is not very romantic.

Joe refers to Josephus Daniels, former secretary of the US Navy under president Woodrow Wilson. During the World War I era, Daniels tried to reform the Navy morally. He increased the number of chaplains, discouraged prostitution at naval bases, and, most controversially, banned the consumption of wine and alcohol, suggesting that soldiers would be better off drinking coffee instead. For soldiers, a “cup of joe” became a frequent part of daily life.

Well, enjoy your cup of joe on Sunday morning like I do!!! We will have ours with croissants from the best French bakery in the world, Le Panier, near Pike Market. We also found out one of our favorite Seattleites got engaged! Congrats to dear young lady Ms. M.

I did not write much about the famous Moscow Metro. I rode it several times when I visited Moscow in 2014. Here is more information about it, if you are interested. One thing for sure, Russian engineering is outstanding, as you will read.

Moscow’s metro is one of the busiest and most visually stunning underground systems in the world. Created as a showcase for the Soviet Union, its elaborate, spacious stations are adorned with mosaics, marble statues and stained glass that tell the story of the communist state. When it opened in 1935, the metro had just 11 stations and attracted 285,000 curious riders on the first day. Today there are 206 stations and up to nine million passengers a day.

The stations were designed by various architects, reflecting different styles, going from art deco to faux Italian. They used tons of marble, mosaics, sculptures, and even chandeliers. They were meant to give workers a meaningful cultural experience, normally available only for the wealthy or government officials.

A few things I noticed, most obvious, no advertising. It feels like a time warp travel back in time. But what I liked most, aside from the long, deep stations that required a little fortitude on my part, was the natural air conditioning of each station, engineered into the design of each station. Coming from a warm and muggy outdoor, it is a most refreshing respite from the rigors of sightseeing and touristing. Imagine how the factory workers feel?

And I did not know this: A station manager controls trains coming and leaving the platform as she sits in a booth at Zhulebino metro station. Another visible change is the controversial replacement of many of the elderly women who used to sit in a booth at the bottom of the seemingly endless escalators, who were famous for telling passengers off if they sat down on the escalator steps. One attendant known by locals as Auntie Lyuda was famous for telling jokes on Mondays, reading poems and telling passengers to imagine they were in England – if passengers want to walk up and down the steps of the escalator, they should do so on the left. Now the attendants are mainly young men, and have yet to show any skill in bantering with passengers.

The Moscow metro’s immaculate stations are a mix of old and new. Get off at Ploshchad Revolutsii (Revolution Square) and you will see passengers going up to a statue of a border guard and rubbing his dog’s nose for luck. There are four such statues in the station, and all the dogs have shiny noses from the constant rubbing. Yes, I rubbed his nose, hoping for a safe and uneventful exit from Russia in the coming week!

A mosaic depicting Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin is located at Kievskaya metro station. The metro was originally named after Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, and the Bolshevik leader’s image was and still is found in stations throughout the metro: in statues, mosaics and a giant bust of Lenin on the wall in Ploshchad Ilyich (Ilyich Square) metro station. One station, Komsomolskaya is quite extravagant, and designed by the same architect as Lenin’s tomb. It has eight large ceiling mosaics made of semiprecious stones, including lapis lazuli and jasper. Other stations have opulent designs with gold, semiprecious stones, mosaics, and up to fourteen different varieties of marble!

One of my favorite stations is Novoslobodskaya, with 32 stained glass panels with political themes, quite common as you can imagine. They were meant to provide a message, to bring residents up to speed ideologically, as they rode through the metro. Needless to say, we are fortunate that dreary old BART, the “L”, and the New York subway tend to leave us alone in our thoughts.

Speaking of Vlad, Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin is also seen at Dobryninskaya metro station. The image of his successor Josef Stalin was also seen on the metro until Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced him in 1956, prompting the dismantling of statues of him all over the Soviet Union (and throughout Siberia). At Dobryninskaya metro station, a mosaic shows a happy crowd holding up a photo of a cosmonaut. The photo previously depicted Stalin and the cosmonaut was parachuted in to hide the disgraced leader. Interestingly, Stalin wanted to “jump start” his new Russia with the metro.

And for you millennials: The metro now has free Wi-Fi and announcements in English are gradually being introduced across the numerous lines. In the more tourist-friendly stations, “selfie spots” have been designated on the floor to help passengers get the best photo with a metro architectural highlight in view. But there are great photo ops at almost every station, compared to our sterile stations in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco (BART).

For a bit of history about the Moscow Metro:

A station manager controls trains coming and leaving the platform as she sits in a booth at each metro station. Another visible change is the controversial replacement of many of the elderly women who used to sit in a booth at the bottom of the seemingly endless escalators, who were famous for telling passengers off if they sat down on the escalator steps. One attendant known by locals as Auntie Lyuda was famous for telling jokes on Mondays, reading poems and telling passengers to imagine they were in England – if passengers want to walk up and down the steps of the escalator, they should do so on the left. Now the attendants are mainly young men, and have yet to show any skill in bantering with passengers. Sadly, I was not able to meet Lyuda, or any of her platform performers.

How about a souvenir? The metro finally seems to have realized how iconic it is, and has introduced tourist stands with metro-related gifts. The souvenirs include an 8-cm model of the guard and the dog (rub the nose at home to your heart’s content for 2,900 rubles or $51.54) or coasters with famous metro mosaics on them, including one of Lenin. I thought $50 was a little pricey for a dust collector.

If you go to Russia, you will be impressed by Russian engineering. As I crossed Russia and Siberia on the Trans Siberian Railway, many of the bridges were built back at the turn of the 19th century. Just stay away from the food on the train!

Airplane food has a bad reputation, but the food itself isn’t entirely to blame—the real fault lies with the plane. A 2015 Cornell University study, reported by Time, found that the environment inside an airplane actually alters the way food and drink tastes—sweet items tasted less sweet, while salty flavors were heightened. The dry recycled air inside the plane cabin doesn’t help either as low humidity can further dull taste and smell making everything in a plane seem bland. According to a 2010 study from the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics in Germany, it’s about 30 percent more difficult to detect sweet and salty tastes when you’re up in the air. Next time you fly, skip the meal, and maybe try a glass of tomato juice instead.

Do you remember when I told you that United and some of the big American airlines in the 1970s had full buffets and soft serve ice cream on their trans continental flights? Now, I don’t know about you, but I would pay extra for a decent meal on my airline trips longer than 3 hours. I did that on my last flight to Europe, on budget airlines, Aer Lingus. The meals were as good as first class!

Can you believe a guy named Nikos Loukas, runs a website called inflightfeed.com? He flies over 180,000 km a year to “feed” his website. In fairness, he highlights both the good and the bad meals. He said the worst meal was some sort of airline mystery meat** on Ukraine International that cost 9 Euros.

His favorite meals? Either the lobster thermidor or the Kyo-kaiseki Japanese dinner on Singapore Airlines in first class. Having flown Singapore twice, I would agree!

The BBC says: Although planes routinely cruise at altitudes of around 40,000 feet, the pressure of the cabin is brought back down to more comfortable altitudes of between six and nine thousand feet above sea level. Even those lowered altitudes, though, are still enough to slow down cook times considerably.

“It’s actually very hard to cook at those altitudes,” explains John Hansman, who directs the International Center for Air Transportation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “They generally are just doing reheating.”

It’s not just the difficulties of cooking, though. Even the food service encourages heat-and-serve style meals. The preference in hot airline meals is for precut, reheated meats, usually swimming in sauce, like boeuf bourguignon. In part, the sauce works to counteract the dryness of the pressurized air cabin. But both the sauce and the slow reheat time also suit today’s blunt-edged airline cutlery sets, which have either no knife or an unsharpened one.

There are a few tricks to getting a decent meal, even in coach. First, check if the airline offers “special meals” in coach, like kosher, low salt, vegetarian, low cholesterol or Asian. These generally require better preparation methods, and are served cold. Second, many airlines are now offering upgraded meals, ordered ahead of time, and provided at a reasonable cost. Third, you always have the option to buy food before boarding or even getting to the airport. We always buy food at our favorite French bakery in Seattle for our flight home.

Thanks to the Samurai School of Discount Travel, you now know the secrets of the veteran traveler and survivor.

**mystery meat=the first time I heard this term was back in 1964, when I was a freshman at UC Berkeley. The guys in my dorm called anything that either tasted bad or we could not adequately identify, by the now ubiquitous term, mystery meat!

After the Army decommissioned the Presidio, I was quite excited about playing golf there. It was billed as “the poor man’s” Olympic Club, with similar small greens, tall trees, and cool misty air permeating the fairways. But the Presidio, with its Western Defense Command, also played a big role in incarcerating the Japanese during World War 2.

The Presidio was the source of 108 civilian exclusion orders and other military directives that enacted President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. These actions forced my Mom’s and Dad’s families, along with all people of Japanese ancestry, citizens or not, from the west coast. It incarcerated them in concentration camps for the duration of the war.

“The Presidio of San Francisco played a pivotal role in the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II,” explains Presidio Trust Curator Liz Melicker. “This exhibition encourages reflection and invites visitors to investigate the issues and decisions that led to this dark chapter in American history. How did leaders arrive at the decision to incarcerate Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens? How did Japanese Americans and others respond to the violation of their civil liberties? And what, as a nation, have we learned that can help us address present-day issues such as mass incarceration, immigration reform, and racial profiling?”

It has been 75 years since the Western Defense Commander Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt signed those 108 orders in Building 35. It led to the removal of 120,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast, primarily California. The exhibit, Exclusion:The Presidio’s Role in World War II Japanese American Incarceration will run for a year in the Presidio Officer’s Club.

From the website: “The Presidio Trust staff worked with collaborators from the Fred T. Korematsu Institute and the National Japanese American Historical Society (NJAHS), both tenants at the Presidio. The Korematsu Institute and NJAHS provided input from concept development through script review, contributed objects and images to the exhibition, and are collaborating on public programming at the Presidio Officers’ Club’s Moraga Hall and school program development throughout the duration of the exhibition.”

“Exclusion explicitly invites visitors to contemplate what can be learned from this shocking time in our history to help us contend with present-day issues—namely racial profiling, anti-immigrant sentiment, mass incarceration, and civil rights discrimination, as well as questions regarding the Constitutionality of Executive Order 9066,” said Karen Korematsu, Founder and Executive Director of the Fred T. Korematsu

Institute.

Two-thirds of those imprisoned were American citizens by birth; the others were non-citizens unable to obtain naturalized citizenship by federal law. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor and under the pretext of “military necessity,” these civilians were removed from their homes and detained without due process. Nearly 40 years later, the federal government unequivocally stated that “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership” had motivated this mass incarceration during World War II—not “military necessity.”

“Now more than ever, we need to teach the lessons to be learned about the injustices of Executive Order 9066 and the World War II forced removal and mass incarceration of Japanese Americans,” explained Rosalyn Tonai, Executive Officer of the National Japanese American Historical Society. “This is a significant event in our collective American history and we are sure the Presidio’s exhibition will be the starting point for much meaningful dialogue.”

As you can probably figure out, I have been spending a great deal of time learning more about Relocation, and Executive Order 9066. I have asked many friends and relatives about it as well. And yes, I will probably put it in a book that I am writing about Sansei, the third generation Japanese Americans, of which I am a part.

Yes, it always makes me sad, even brings tears to my eyes. But what I think about most is that such illegal incarceration can happen again. And to then draft the young Japanese American men (Nisei) into the service, I often wonder what my Grandfather must have thought about his wonderful new country and land of opportunity. My Uncle was drafted and served in the Military Intelligence Service for the duration of the war, and in Occupied Japan.

Anytime a single race, religion, or group is singled out as “dangerous” or “the enemy”, this saddest chapter in American freedom is replayed in my mind. Yes, it could be African-Americans, or Latinos, or Muslims, or perhaps even you!

PS: It was a relatively small display, well done, and focused on the role of the Presidio in EO 9066.